On July 12, 2017, websites, Internet users, and online communities will come together to sound the alarm about the US government’s attack on net neutrality.

Net Neutrality currently guarantees all websites — start-ups, blogs, independent media, lolcats — an even playing field. It’s essentially the First Amendment of the Internet. It’s what has made it so revolutionary, and it gives all of us a voice.

But new FCC Chairman and former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai has a plan to end net neutrality and give big cable companies immense control over what we see and do online. If they get their way, the FCC will give companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T control over what we can see and do on the Internet, with the power to slow down or block websites and charge apps and sites extra fees to reach an audience.

Without Net Neutrality, those corporations can kill websites by relegating them to slow lanes if they don’t pay fees — or if they just don’t like the content they contain. This threatens not only the Internet that we love, but the very foundations of a free society.